Va. man receives $200 parking ticket, but it's not his car | News

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WASHINGTON (WUSA9) -- Only on 9, one of the most outrageous parking tickets we've ever seen.

A Virginia man has spent the better part of this year fighting a ticket and subsequent fine for something he insists was incorrectly issued.

And he's now turning to some pretty drastic measures.

"I spent 20 years fighting for this country, its Constitution and the laws and I'm being held guilty until I prove myself innocent," said Arlington resident Walt Edwards, an Air Force veteran who is understandably exasperated. "And they won't listen to anything I say."

"They" is the DC Department of Motor Vehicles who mailed Walt his first ticket in his 54 years of driving--ironically for an infraction he insists he did NOT commit.

"My vehicle has not been in the District of Columbia for 12 years. It was parked right here on Sunday afternoon, the 27th of January," he said.

Walt was ticketed for parking at this bus stop in the 31-hundred block of M Street in Northwest Washington. But there's a problem: he says it wasn't his car.

"They got the color wrong, they got the number of doors wrong and they got the expiration date of the tag wrong," he explained.

Walt didn't even know about the January infraction until he received a notice for an unpaid ticket and subsequent fine in March. Amount due: $200.

"This has been really unbelievable," said Judy MacPherson, Walt's wife. "At some point, you start laughing about it because he'll send in an email and then you get something back that's like way over here. It's like hello?"

Walt's multiple efforts to appeal this ticket have been denied.

"No matter what I send them, they reject the appeal," he said.

"They definitely picked the wrong guy to do this to," added Judy, laughing.

Her husband is undeterred. He told us, "I will not stand for the DC government to tell me I'm guilty until I prove myself innocent and then I'm still guilty!"

So now, he's asked the DMV's General Counsel to charge the ticket writer-D. Dyson-with deliberately lying.

"I want the officer charged with perjury. And I want the DMV charged with conspiracy to defraud me," he said.

We contacted the DMV and were assured the case would be investigated.

Said Judy, "You can't just go, okay, I'll give you the money when it's not your car!"

Added Walt, "They're just hell bent on getting me to send them $200 and I'm not going to do it!"

Walt tells us he's already appealed four times, written to Mayor Vince Gray, the DMV and even its General Counsel-all with no results.